


Present

by mandii



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Into Darkness - Freeform, Introspection, M/M, not-dead tribbles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2013-10-02
Packaged: 2017-12-28 04:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/987843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandii/pseuds/mandii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not that a man can do much to stop a dose of radiation poisoning that comes from a warp core. You're practically better off putting a bandaid on it than anything modern medicine can do, and McCoy knows it. He knows he's not a miracle worker, no matter how much he hurts when he sees that body come draped in a bag to his medical table. How damning, that he'd be the one selected to do the autopsy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Present

He wasn't there.

Not that a man can do much to stop a dose of radiation poisoning that comes from a warp core. You're practically better off putting a bandaid on it than anything modern medicine can do, and McCoy knows it. He knows he's not a miracle worker, no matter how much he hurts when he sees that body come draped in a bag to his medical table. How damning, that he'd be the one selected to do the autopsy. 

He knows death when he sees it. Greets it practically like an old friend, because christ, he's seen more death than anyone in their life ought to and he's tired of the feeling of loss, tired of the proverbial carpet being ripped out from under him. He lost his father only four years ago, lost Jocelyn soon after that, scooped away from him into the arms of a diplomat that probably treated her better than he did, and that was alright. It was okay that he lost everything, because he might as well throw himself, drunken and stupid onto a shuttle headed for Starfleet headquarters in San Francisco. He's barely stepped past the borders of Georgia when he could help it, but there he was, unshaven and dirty from a night full of impulse decision, and it looks like he wasn't the only one not dressed in cadet reds - not the only one who barely bothered to scribble his name down and sell his life away.

Jim Kirk swept into his life instead, what little he had left of it. And this fresh-faced Iowa farm boy with a busted nose and a shirt caked with blood and a split lip ended up being dragged to his new single room, ended up being forced to sit and take it as McCoy ran a dermal regenerator over his broken skin and none-too-gently pried his nose back into place. 

He doesn't know when it was that he decided he would follow him everywhere. It was somewhere, maybe in a bar on a late night where Jim was sitting there flirting with a brunette that was nearly out of his league and managing to charm her away to the bathrooms. Maybe it was watching him during hand-to-hand; watching him duck and swing and move with all the finesse of a kid who grew up knowing how to swing a punch without following the rules. Maybe it was those damnable eyes; maybe it was Jim looking up at him one day, saying he was gonna take the damn test again, and who the hell even does that? Takes an impossible test, not once, not twice, but three times? He remembers scowling then, swearing under his breath, but he wanted him _there_ and dammit he would be there. That was it, probably, the moment he at least _realized_.

He watched him win. Well, his version of winning. Watched him sit right there like a cocky son of a bitch and chomp down on an apple, and stare right up at the test administrators, grinning wildly, like he knew a secret. And McCoy let him pat him on the back, because he was _there_ to see it. 

He was there during the tribunal, there when that pointy-eared son of a bitch stood and straightened his uniform so perfectly, when he was accused of cheating, not understanding the perimeters of the test and what it was meant to do, and remembers Jim Kirk echoing his father, echoing something he heard in a dissertation once, _"I don't believe in no-win scenarios."_

McCoy wonders, idly, if Spock regrets those words that he said to him. _You of all people should know, Mr. Kirk. A captain cannot cheat death._ And even with that in mind, they were swept away to the Vulcan distress call, and he was called away on board the fleet's flagship as a senior medical officer. He remembers sitting there, wishing to trade places, wishing he could be the man with his feet flat on the ground and Kirk could be the one up sailing away on the Enterprise where he belonged. He remembers the look on his face, that _disappointment_ that rang so deeply within him, and remembers one of the stupidest damn things he's ever done in his life. Granted, he didn't know Jim was allergic, but even without that, taking a guy and injecting him just to sneak him aboard a starship was perhaps one of the riskiest things he's ever done. 

He never did risky things before Jim.

He never went diving off a cliff on a class M planet. Probably would've never shoved his hand in a damned torpedo. Probably wouldn't have flirted with the beautiful science officer that snuck her way on board the ship, eyes sparkling blue like Jim's and whipcrack smart.

But Jim had that way of making him follow no matter what, and despite the man's crazy intentions and easy-going, flippant nature, McCoy wonders when he thought the boy was immortal. 

He knows all too well that at his core, everybody dies, he's seen it happen beneath his own two hands, seen patients give up and lose hope and their eyes go glassy once their heart stops, once the brain function ceases and functions slowly shut down. He's familiar with the way that the body loses too much blood, familiar with the way that shock can kill a man, that lack of oxygen to the brain can slowly leave a shell of a person behind - a person, a vulcan, a klingon, whatever species - they all die similarly. Xenobiology be damned, they might be harder to kill, but the way a body slumps onto the table and the limbs go slack is something that isn't just inherently human.

McCoy never thought he'd see it on him. Thought foolishly, hell, he was older, he's gonna be the one to die first. Maybe even the errant thought here and there; he's probably gonna end up following him into death as it was, too. Thought it would happen with the black hole practically swallowing the Enterprise whole. Thought it might happen as they crashed slowly, elegantly, spiraling until he was sick in a bin down into Earth's atmosphere. He never thought he wouldn't be with him; wouldn't see it coming, but as the ship regained power he remembers opening his communicator to ask where the hell Jim was, and what he was doing. At the silence, his heart went dead.

They say the heart can occasionally skip a beat. He's not sure how long it was until he felt like he could breathe again, and somehow he _knew_ even before there was an official verdict, because _who the hell would be crazy enough to jump into a warp core?_ The only man he knew who would be crazy enough to take the Kobayashi Maru three times. The only man he knew who would be crazy enough to detonate anti-matter in an enemy vessel and live to tell the tale. The only man he knew who would grab his hand for a fleeting second in assurance before leaping off the side of the cliffs of Nibiru, only to crash into the waters below. The only man who was crazy enough that he'd want to follow him everywhere, even to a Klingon planet and even after a mass genocidal maniac with superblood. When the body is brought to him, Uhura looking up at him with tears in her eyes, Carol looking so damn pretty with her hair falling over in a fringe at her chin, McCoy stares at him.

He doesn't know why he wasn't there, because he was supposed to be _there_ , should have been, at least should have sat with him and reassured him that things were gonna be over soon. He doesn't know why he was cooped up here in the medical bay with Dr. Marcus, taking care of her leg and setting her straight and trying to keep his equipment from flinging all over the damn place. He wasn't _there_ , wasn't there, and that makes a sob start trying to form in his throat, and he can't continue. He doesn't bother, just goes to his station and sits, hand cradled over his face. He wasn't there and that's all the blame he can give to himself, and dammit, he couldn't save him if he -

Tried.

His eyes open at the sudden movement. At the slow, beginnings of a purr. At the inhale of a breath in necrotic tissue that he _knew_ had been dead three months ago at _least_ and his reaction is immediate. "Get me a cryotube. _Now!_ " 

It's the only way to preserve brain function, and he's standing over Kirk with a tear in his eye and a brush of his palm over one of them, the biobed still reading the fatal signs, trying to remember just how quickly the body could be refrozen in time. It's a matter of minutes, he knows, and he has to do whatever he can - he's _late_ but he's here and he's exactly where he needs to be. He can keep him, frozen in cryostasis just long enough to be able to obtain more of a specimen and be able to utilize the platelets to his advantage, to even regenerate the most damaged of internal tissues, and McCoy can barely keep the nerves out of his voice - much less his hands as he attempts to cradle half the body as they manage to slide him inside one of the torpedo shaped tubes. He freezes him with a tap of practically ancient code (thank you, Dr. Marcus), and he waits.

He's going to be _there_ when Kirk wakes up, whether he has to sleep in a chair for the rest of the month.


End file.
